Cursed (Decorah Security #21) - Rebecca York Page 0,19

was any magic involved, it came from the damn robe. Had the voodoo priestess cursed it? Or had Andre infused it with magic?

Yeah, right.

That her mind was taking this direction appalled her. She had been hired for a specific job that had nothing to do with a voodoo priestess. Or maybe it did, come to think of it, since Andre had carefully neglected to put anything about the woman in his report on the town.

She was going to ask him about that. But not until morning—when she knew where to find him.

The robe felt like it was burning her skin, and she couldn’t stand to wear it another nanosecond. Even if she had to wrap herself in a sheet, she had to get the damn thing off.

With fingers that were almost frantic, she worked the buttons, restraining the impulse to simply rip the garment down the front. When she was free of the straitjacket, she tossed it onto the small upholstered chair in the corner of the bedroom.

Naked, she breathed out a sigh of relief, then began prowling the room.

She hadn’t thought to look for anything else to wear. Now she started opening drawers. In one she found a man’s dress shirt, soft from many washings.

Earlier she’d shied away from the idea of wearing anything that might belong to Andre Gascon. But necessity made her slip into the shirt. As he’d warned, it was much too long. But when she rolled up the sleeves, she decided it would make a good enough night shirt.

Clicking the light on her watch, she saw that it was too early to get up. And she was reluctant to prowl around a strange house in the dark—dressed like a ragamuffin.

So, she lay back down, knowing that the possibility of sleep was a distant one. In fact, her mind was whirling with too many ideas. She tried to think about the mystery of the woman outside, chanting. But she kept coming back to the mystery of Andre Gascon. And the other man named Andre whom she had met only in two very vivid dreams.

The long-ago Andre had stirred her senses. Made her aware of hot, sexy feelings that she hadn’t experienced since she’d been in Trevor’s arms. And dreaming of him had brought her to orgasm, if she were honest.

Damn him. He wasn’t Trevor. He wasn’t her husband, the love of her life. The man who had taught her about sex. Taken her skydiving and spelunking and to the Ritz in Paris. Deliberately she brought back the feelings she’d experienced when she’d learned of his death. The aching sense of loss and despair.

He had been so much a part of her life that she had hardly known how to cope. Luckily for her, an old friend from her law enforcement training days now worked for Decorah Security and had persuaded her to join him there. He’d gotten her a job with Frank Decorah there, when she would have spent her days lying in bed in the dark, mourning her loss.

The friends she’d made at her new job had rallied around her, too, and helped pull her through the worst of it. They were the most amazing group of men and women she had ever encountered. They had all been through dangerous and frightening experiences.

Hunter and Kathryn Kelley had fought off a government conspiracy. Knox Marshall had come back from a drug-induced stupor. And Mac Bradley had returned from an adventure no one would believe. In fact, once the men and women of Decorah had gotten to know and trust her, they had shared secrets about themselves that were hard to believe

They were strong. They had lent her their strength. And she had told herself that if they could survive what life had thrown at them, she could too.

Still, the reality of Trevor’s loss had always been a given in her life. Even when the grief had dulled, it was a part of her soul.

Tonight, she felt more alive than she had since his death. She should welcome that feeling, she told herself. Instead, she resented it. She had gotten used to living a certain way—and a dream lover had brought her to a new level of reality.

A dream lover. She hated that part of it as much as anything else. He wasn’t even real.

Or was he? Did he have something to do with the present Andre Gascon? She wanted to put that notion out of her head. Maybe she did, because sometime before dawn, she fell